Rights and Security in Housing: the Repossession Process in the Social Rented Sector

Abstract

Rented housing in Britain is divided between a private sector in which houses are let for profit, and a social rented sector in which houses have traditionally been let as a service to the community. The social rented sector is itself divided between two main types of provider: local authorities (council housing), and housing associations, although account must be taken of other providers, particularly in Scotland, where Scottish Homes, a quango, is a substantial provider of social housing. Until recently, the new towns were substantial providers of rented housing, but the new town development corporations have now all been wound up and their stock transferred to other landlords. In this article, the expressions 'social rented sector' and 'social housing' refer to housing let by the public sector bodies just referred to and by housing associations. For most of this century the nature of the provider has determined the legal tenure on which rented housing has been held. Thus, the Rent Acts applied to private sector lets, but were not applied to public sector tenants. Between 1980 and 1989 council tenants and housing association tenants shared a common tenure regime, the secure tenancy. However, when in 1989, a new form of tenure the assured tenancy was introduced for the private sector,' it was also applied to new housing association lets, although local authorities and other public sector bodies continued to offer secure tenancies. As a consequence, since 1989, there have been two different legal tenures within the social rented sector: the secure tenancy and the assured tenancy. The two legal regimes afford substantially different rights to tenants. In the light of these changes to tenure regimes, this article discusses the importance of legal guarantees of security of tenure in the social rented sector, and compares the way in which the process of recovery of possession has been operating in the two forms of tenure. This is a two-fold comparison. As the rights of existing housing association tenants were preserved in 1989, housing associations continued to have many secure tenants, and so it is possible to compare the respective positions of secure and assured tenants both (a) as between local authorities and housing associations, and (b) within the housing association sector. The research on which this article is based shows that there are substantial differences in the outcomes of the repossession process for different groups of tenants. The questions these outcomes pose include whether differences in the legal rights of secure and assured tenants are capable of explaining the outcomes of the repossession process, and what other factors might be influencing outcomes.